One of my favorite texts
16th April, 2027The Trees by Philip Larkin1 was one of my favorite texts when I was doing A-Levels literature and it remains one of my favorite poems.
It has straight forward structure: three four-lined stanzas, each with eight syllables, with one exception. Reading it over and over again, the repetitive syllabic structure, the verby lines and sparse use of adjectives make it memorable.
In particular, the image of trees as “unresting castles” is deeply ingrained in my mind. When I am in Brunei, Malaysia or China, the thick lush forests leave a deep impression on me. I look upon the masses of green and feel drawn to their opaqueness.
Their leaves form opaque walls, enshadowing the undergrowth. On windy days, they behave like oceans, their branches undulating. On hot days after rain, mist rise out of them like a steaming basket. But every day, they are unrevealing, contradicting Larkin’s trees by remaining green.
It was only after moving to Germany that I felt the weight of “Their greenness is a kind of grief”. Every spring this grief grows on me in a dimension I cannot explain. It reminds me of some kind of unescapable Samsara-like cycle, not mortality, the theme that occupies most interpreters of literature2.
Comparing myself with the trees, I wonder: am I different from last year, or am I the same? Do I also have “rings of grain”, proving that I have grown, or am I doomed to repeat my years until the day I don’t? Even if I had “rings of grain”, are they actually signs of growth, or just a “trick of looking new”?
In my youth, when my life was still anchored in tropical lands, there was no “yearly trick of looking new”, just perpetual “fullgrown thickness”. I read the poem in a more optimistic light back then. I saw the trees as a perpetual unstoppable growth. If one fell, another would take its place, rising up to the opening in the sky it had just created.
Having arrived back in Germany after a holiday, I notice that the trees in the parking lot are “coming into leaf”, where they were still bald only 3 weeks ago. There’s this small feeling of betrayal, as if they went on with life without waiting for me. When I look at them, I can’t help feeling trapped. Like them I am unresting, but I am not a castle. My “recent buds relax”, but do not spread.
The grief comes not from knowing that one day, as all living things eventually do, you will die. It comes from knowing that you will live the same life, year after year, regardless of underlying cycles, and trying to escape it anyways.